Table of Contents

4. Similarities and Differences in the correlation of internal and external
factors

5. Conclusions

Bibliography

While most of the literature on peace and conflict resolution focus
in the internal factors of instrastate conflict, and considers external
factors only as the intervention of a third party, adding to its exacerbation
if negative or its resolution when positive, this essay builds on the notion
that, for historical and structural reasons, in Latin America violent conflict
is a permanent feature of foreign intervention.

It will be argued through the comparative analysis of the dynamics of
civil war in three countries –El Salvador, Guatemala and Colombia- that
although internal factors take preeminence in the consideration of the
sources of violence, state level factors do not operate in a vacuum, and
that the combination and interaction of regional and systemic level conditions,
and the actions undertaken by the hegemonic power in the region play a
significant role.

Both aspects –conditions and actions- derive from the application of
National Security Doctrine that the United States divised in the context
of the cold war and that functioned as ideological legitimization of the
global expansion of U.S interests.

In the Western Hemisphere, the doctrine took very concrete expression
in a set of policies designed to secure the United States traditional sphere
of influence in the bipolar international system. According to U.S conceptualization
of regional security, Latin America armies role was to guarantee internal
stability, which meant preserving mainly as counterinsurgency strategies
to meet the challenges posed by the guerrilla movements. The net results
were the further polarization and destabilization of those societies, as
in the case of violent and prolonged civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala
and as in Colombia, the oldest armed conflict in the region.

Edward Azars theory of protacted social conflict[1]
that at the intermediate level provides a bridge between the generic models
from the conflict resolution tradition and specific policies and historical
explanations of particular conflicts, establishes the necessary links between
internal and external causal factors of civil war. Although developed during
the 1970s and 1980, this theorethical approach offers insight into contemporary
conflict analysis and help to situate it the context of social and international
conditions.

Drawing from Azars emphasis that the sources of civil wars lay predominantly
within the state, and his recognition of the role that what he called “international
linkages” play, this essay will develop the argument that the counterinsurgencies
policies established to neutralize the guerrilla movements in Latin American
countries in the early 1960 within the framework of the National Security
Doctrine proclaimed by the United States in the context of the cold war,
allowed the state to impose internal conditions of indiscriminate terror
directed to the civilian population with the immediate consequences of
thousand of deaths, massive displacement and human right abuses and with
unforeseeable results at societal levels, contributing to the further fragmentation
of already highly polarized internal situations.

The three case study conflicts were selected with the criteria that:

All presented the characteristics of Protacted social Conflicts, starting
as civil wars, but with strong regional and international security dimension.

All represented expressions of long-festering political instability.

All have socioeconomic roots pertaining to a common history of export economies
based on cash crops, gross inequality of land tenure and oligarchic rule
characterized by economical and political exclusion.

None was the manifestation of ethnicity even though the three countries
have plural societies, with different proportions of indigenous population.

All were approached by the state from a counterinsurgency perspective.

In section 2 we will present the conditions at the systemic and regional
levels. Section 3 gives a brief description of the three case studies.
Section 4 summarizes the common features and main differences in the correlation
between internal and external factor in the dynamics of conflicts in the
cases. Section 5 concludes.

The purpose of the present paper is promote discussion about the interaction
of internal and external causal factors in view of its implications for
conflict resolution theory and practice. As both an analytic and normative
field, conflict resolution is not only concerned with the symptoms of destructive
conflict but with the causes as well.

[1] Azars
theory developed through a series of studies, but it is best display in
his book The Management of Protacted Social Conflict: Theory and Cases,
Aldershot: Dartmout, 1990.